It served my needs, though. Chair disappeared into the mix like a green pea in mashed potatoes.

I moved slowly and steadily, trying not to draw attention to myself. I couldn’t afford that, not with Brain’s evidence in my backpack. Most people focused in front of them, safely preventing any type of human connection. Those few people who met my eyes smiled sympathetically or nodded condescendingly, then stepped out of the way, as if doing me a favor. Occasionally someone recognized me from TV; I wasn’t especially memorable, but Mighty Chair had his own fan club. He was by far the most famous wheelchair in America. (Well, to be fair, also the only famous wheelchair.) When that happened, I smiled and nodded, and before they could stop me, I raised my eyebrows in frustration and pointed ahead as if I were late to an appointment and couldn’t stop.

There didn’t seem to be much interaction between the troops and civilians, although if four or five people stood together for more than a few seconds, a cop or militia would ask them to move on. It all seemed casually organized; some of the militia were posing proudly for photographs or selfies on certain streets, positioning themselves so the Capitol was visible in the background, while others sternly ordered people not to take pictures. But all of them shared a common mission: There would be no demonstrations on the streets of the Capitol.

I suspected similar scenes were taking place on the streets of every major American city. I couldn’t confirm it, because media coverage of demonstrations had been specifically forbidden to prevent protests from spreading.

While I waited on a corner for the light to change, an army corporal stopped next to me. We glanced at each other and smiled in acknowledgment. As he turned away, he said out of the side of his mouth, “This is total bullshit. What the fuck are we doing here?”

Rather than saying anything, I reached into my shirt pocket and showed him my challenge coin.

The soldier looked at it and rattled a supportive fist. “Hooah!” he said, then walked away.

Look, I admit it, I was being way overly cautious. I wasn’t even a small fish in a big pond. In reality I was probably more like one of those plastic deep-sea divers blowing air bubbles out of a helmet at the bottom of an aquarium. I wasn’t especially valuable, I’d served a minor purpose, and I wasn’t going anywhere. The reality was that having to deal with Chair probably made detaining me more of a hassle than I was worth. But the government didn’t know what I had, or more accurately what I might have. Being me, though, just in case I looped around the parking garage before going inside. I always paid attention to my paranoia; it probably had saved my life on patrol several times.

Van was parked on the first level. The once comfortable whir of the van’s panel door sliding open and the ramp extending now seemed unusually loud and threatening; I climbed inside and got locked down as quickly and quietly as possible.